Our staffing agency, like so many others, relies on online reviews and referrals. Getting honest feedback from talent and building a reputation as a top agency is crucial. What your teams say about you on LinkedIn, Glassdoor or other sites can make or break your recruitment and business development efforts.
But you can only control what people say about you online so much, right? So how do you get the folks whose opinion matters the most (your talent) to engage in a way that is meaningful, insightful and — most importantly — builds trust?
Here are the three best practices we think any staffing firm, whether in the healthcare space or not, can do to make their talent the loudest and proudest fans online.
Be real and transparent. As a clinician-first, clinician-owned agency, we strive to be real and transparent. It’s not just what our clinicians want — it’s what we wanted when we were in their shoes. So many factors affect a clinician’s choice of travel staffing agency, just as is the case with any staffing firm. Whenever talent reaches out, they want a real person as their first point of contact.
After making that first contact, get curious. What do they want and what do they need? What are their nice-to-haves and must-haves? Dig deep and keep your interest genuine. In turn, your staffing firm should also be upfront about what can expect from you and don’t make promises you can’t keep.
Ask for honest feedback, and then act on it. Don’t just go above and beyond to make sure your clinicians’ needs are taken care of — go out of our way to find out how well you delivered. Seek out honest feedback about the places you staff, the way your firm works and how you can improve. In addition, be sure to engage directly with talent that mention your firm on review sites and ask follow-up questions to learn more. Whenever you can, make internal changes to create the best experience for both the client and clinician.
Get to know your candidates as people. Our team at Next Move Healthcare competes in a monthly “raving fan” challenge to engage our talent, build loyalty and relationships and ultimately make them our biggest advocates. The challenge is simple: Recruiters take time to personally connect with their clinicians by asking them a single question. The question is different each month and is dictated by the previous month’s winner.
For example, the challenge of the month may be to ask ten clinicians what they (the recruiter) could do for them today to make their assignment more enjoyable. It might be to ask three clinicians why they got into nursing. This simple gesture makes our talent feel seen as human beings rather than a number, and it builds camaraderie between them and the recruiters. It makes the talent feel like they’re part of our team – because they are. Their answers also allow us to learn more about them as individuals, deepen relationships and deliver a response that’s authentic and personal.
And a challenge like this isn’t the only avenue for engaging with your talent to learn more about them and their experiences with your firm. Whatever way you choose to connect with your candidates and contingent workers, keep it simple. When you treat your talent as real people who are looking for honesty, respect and sincerity, you build trust with them. This opens the door to create a raving fan, or a vocal advocate who can’t help but share their experience both online and in-person to anyone who will listen. And those raving fans often bring more qualified talent and partners to work with.